Seventeen years passed away before any one again tried to navigate the Colorado.  The settling of the country, the knowledge of it Powell had published, the completion of the Southern Pacific Railway to Yuma in 1877, and of the Atlantic and Pacific from Isleta to The Needles, in 1880-83, and of the Rio Grande Western across the Green at Gunnison Valley, simplified travel in the Basin of the Colorado.  A new railway was then proposed from Grand Junction, Colorado, down the Colorado River, through the Canyons to the Gulf of California, a distance of twelve hundred miles.  At that time coal was a difficult article to procure on the Pacific Coast, and it was thought that this “water-level” road, crossing no mountains, would be profitable in bringing the coal of Colorado to the Golden Gate.  At present coal in abundance is to be had in the Puget Sound region, and this reason for constructing a Grand Canyon railway is done away with.  There is nothing to support a railway through the three hundred miles of the great gorge (or through the other two hundred miles of canyon to the Junction), except tourist travel and the possible development of mines.  These are manifestly insufficient at the present time to warrant even a less costly railway, which, averaging about four thousand feet below the surface of the surrounding country, would be of little service to those living away from its immediate line, and there is small chance to live along the line.  In addition the floods in the Grand Canyon are enormous and capricious.  Sometimes heavy torrents from cloudbursts plunge down the sides of the canyon and these would require to be considered as well as those of the river itself.  To be absolutely safe from the latter the line would probably require, in the Grand Canyon, to be built at least one hundred and twenty feet above low water, so that for the whole distance through the Marble-Grand Canyon there would seldom be room beside the tracks for even a station.  But Frank M. Brown had faith, and a company for the construction of the Denver, Colorado Canyon, and Pacific Railway was organised.  Brown was the president, and in 1889 he formed an expedition to Survey the line.

On March 25th the preliminary party, consisting of F. M. Brown, F. C. Kendrick, chief engineer, and T. P. Rigney, assistant engineer, left Denver for Grand Junction, a station on the Rio Grande Western (near the C of Colorado, State name on map, p. 51), and the next morning set the first stake for the new railway which was to cost the president so dear.  Then they bought a boat from the ferryman, and after repairing it laid in a supply of rations, engaged some men, and ran a half-mile down Grand River.  Brown then left to go East in order to perfect his arrangements for this attempt to survey a railway route through the dangerous canyons.  The boat party continued down Grand River to the head of the canyon, twenty-four miles, and then more slowly descended over rougher water, averaging five or six miles a day.  At